After nearly a decade of development, construction, and testing, the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is pointing skyward and collecting light from distant worlds with the help of a special starlight-blocking device, called a coronagraph, built at the American Museum of Natural History.

This is Gemini Planet Imager’s first-light image of the light scattered by a disk of dust orbiting the young star HR4796. The narrow ring is thought to be dust from asteroids or comets left behind by planet formation; some scientists have theorized that the sharp edge of the ring is defined by an unseen planet.

Processing by Marshall Perrin, Space Telescope Science Institute